Loss Changes You – Now What? | Dave Roberts

We’ve all experienced loss.

A death. A divorce. A job. A diagnosis.
You can probably name a dozen more.

But here’s the truth most people don’t talk about:
Loss doesn’t just hurt… it changes you.

So, the real question becomes, now what?

In Episode #36, Frank Zaccari sits down with Dave Roberts—adjunct professor of psychology at Utica University, grief counselor, speaker, and expert in bereavement support, to explore what happens after life is turned upside down.

Dave shares his deeply personal journey following the devastating loss of his 18-year-old daughter to cancer, a moment that didn’t just impact his life, but reshaped his purpose. 

Together, Frank and Dave dive into:

• Why grief never truly ends, but how it can evolve 
• The myth of “stages” of grief and what actually happens instead 
• How to move forward without “moving on” 
• The power of perspective in life’s darkest moments 
• How loss can become a catalyst for purpose, connection, and impact 

This is not a conversation about fixing grief.
It’s about understanding it… living with it… and ultimately growing through it.

If you’ve ever asked yourself, “How do I move forward after loss?”
This episode is for you.

#BounceBackPodcast #Resilience #Grief #Leadership #MentalHealth #PersonalGrowth #TrustTheProcess

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:30

Welcome to bounce back in business and life. Now we have all experienced some form of loss. It can be a death, a divorce, a loss of job or battling a disease, you can probably name a dozen others yourself. The key point is this loss and changes. Now what do you do now? Let's find out. My guest today is Dave Roberts, and he is a podcast host, a guest, and adjunct professor of psychology child life at Utica University. His specialties include believement support, education, and training. Also chemical dependency, counseling, public speaking, group facilitation, or grief counseling. His commitment to helping others navigate grief is a result of a challenge that he experienced following the death of his 18-year-old daughter, Janine, in March of 2003 due to cancer. Unbelievable to even imagine. Dave, welcome to Bounce Back in Business in Life.

SPEAKER_01 1:37

Frank, thank you. I've been looking forward to our conversation for some time now.

SPEAKER_02 1:41

Me too. Me too. Now, Dave, you experienced to me what's probably a loss greater than I can even possibly imagine the death of a child. How did you take this, this intense loss in grief, and have it dedicate your life to helping others deal with it?

SPEAKER_01 1:59

Well, you know, before I get into that, I was never a stranger to loss. I have danced with death since I've been five years old, and I'm 70 now. For 65 years of my life, grief has been a part of it. And the first loss I remember experiencing was a loss that wasn't due to death, but it was significant in that my father left when I was five years old, leaving my mother to raise me as an only child. I never saw my father again after that and found out at age 14 that he died when I was 11 years old. And there are a series of other losses. The uh my mother, my maternal grandmother, and maternal aunt who helped raise me. We could talk about several pets who I've, you know, I've transitioned to Rainbow Bridge, you know, they've which is a significant losses in and of itself. A mentor, dear mentor, dear friend, person who taught me everything about chemical dependency counseling, building teams. He died of cancer. And I was able to work through those losses. I don't want to say in a relatively quick time frame, but it was not as traumatic for me because these were losses that in some way were expected. Now, fast forward to September of 2001, my then 17-year-old daughter was living outside the home with her significant other, and she called me up and said, Dad, we have to talk to you. So I'm thinking they either had a crisis in their relationship or something happened of catastrophic proportions. My daughter, Frank, was about as subtle as a trumpet solo. She came into the kitchen of our house before the door was even closed. She said, Dad, I'm pregnant. Okay. And I share this story with my students in my death, dying, and bereavement class because many fathers who would hear that their daughter was pregnant out of wedlock, it would not go over all that well. And they might also get pretty angry at the process. But you know, the thing is, I was calm, and I told my daughter, I said, I wish she too had decided to wait for a little while longer, but I was calm because I loved her boyfriend. I loved her significant other. He's 18 years old, had a well-developed sense of responsibility to blight his young years. And I knew he was going to take good care of my daughter. I basically said to her, I said to them, Do you have a plan? We went through everything. I was convinced that they had a plan. And then Janine goes, Do you want to tell mom? I said, Honey, this one's on you. You have to tell her because I kind of figured I didn't want to be there to witness her reaction. Needless to say, my wife wasn't too thrilled, but eventually she acclimated to the idea. During early pregnancy, Janine injured her right foot in a freak accident. Her right foot swelled during the pregnancy. We all thought it was you know symptoms, you know, common symptoms of pregnancy, you know, swelled foot. But every intervention they tried, foot elevation, rest, a walking boot, foot didn't improve. After on May 2nd, 2002, her daughter and my first grandchild, Brianna, was born. They did an MRI, and Janine did not want to do the MRI before her daughter was born because she didn't want to jeopardize her baby. They found an undefined eight-centimeter mass at the bottom of her foot. They biopsied it. The doctor who biopsied said it's highly suggestive of cancer. On May 26th, which was a couple of days after Memorial Weekend, we talked to our local oncologist and she said she had a really rare form of cancer called the veli or abdomyosarcoma, which is a connective muscle tissue cancer that, with the primary site being her foot. Now, in upstate New York where I live, Frank, we're all about colon cancer treatment, prostate cancer treatment, breast cancer treatment. We have the resources to deal with this, but sarcomas were our rare form of cancer. At the time in 2002, they constituted about 3 to 4 percent of any new cancers that were diagnosed per year. So we went to Dana Farber Hospital in Boston, one of the best research hospitals in the country in the world for pediatric sarcoma. In the space of a five-minute consult, we were told that my daughter had uh stage four cancer with bone marrow and lymph node involvement, that there was no cure for her cancer, and the only hope we were gonna have was full-blown chemotherapy, aggressive chemotherapy to put her cancer until her mission until they could find a cure. Now, when we heard the news, my daughter tears started streaming down her face. I looked because I frank, what I heard loud and clear is that unless there's a miracle, your daughter's gonna die. And I want to give you three dates just for perspective and to show your audience how life can change on a diamond that we should value every day that we have on earth. May 2nd, my granddaughter's born, so I'm celebrating being a grandfather for the first time. May 19th, I completed the requirements for my master's in social work degree from the State University of New York in Albany, culminating a 25-year odyssey in higher education to get that degree. May 26th, I found out I have a terminally ill adult child, and in all likelihood, unless there's a miracle, I'm gonna be walking a path that I never thought I'd be walking as a parent. June 2nd, we had the consult of Dana Farber. So in the space of a month, my life turned upside down. Janine was determined. She came home and said, Dad, you know, I'm not gonna go down without a fight. And I said, I know you're not. I wouldn't expect that you would. And she battled for lack of a better way to put this her cancer very valiantly for 10 months. Grace under pressure, you know, she did the best she could, but after six rounds of chemotherapy, her cancer is only 80% in remission. And with cancer, it's 100% or bust in remission. And another site had surfaced that where it hasn't previously surfaced before. The oncologist said, you really ought to celebrate. Now I wasn't there when she gave her the results of the after the full rounds of chemo, but I'm saying, no, I'm not celebrating. It's not 100% remission. So I called her. And because I couldn't be at the consult, I had something that worked that I couldn't get out of, or some other I for I forget what it was, but I just couldn't be there. I said, give it to me straight. She goes, it's not good. And she asked me if I had other kids, and I said, the minute she asked me that, I knew it wasn't good. And then I had talked to the consulting oncologist and Dana Farber, and they gave me the same news. In December of 2002, it was the last Christmas that my daughter and I spent together. We were sitting in the family room of our home. Now, give Frank, understand that after she got sick, her significant other, my granddaughter Brianna, moved in with their cat, my two cats, my wife Sherry, my two sons, Dan and Matt, and me. And the the running joke is how many two-legged and four-legged could you get into a single-level ranch? See, we tested it, it was nine. So that's the answer that I can give everybody. And so she we were sitting in the family room, we found ourselves alone, and she said, Dad, you know, I did a lot this Christmas, and I did what I did because I'm not sure I'm going to be here next year. So at 18 years old, this young lady who should have been planning her wedding, should have been planning the rest of her life, was coming to grips with her mortality and realizing that she didn't have a lot of time left on Earth. March 1st, 2003, she died at home with hospice services. Janine decided on February 19th, and I can remember these dates, Frank, as if they happened yesterday, as opposed to 23 years ago. She decided to terminate treatment because treatment was more painful for her. It wasn't doing anything to mitigate her pain, arrest her cancer, the growth of her tumors. She asked for hospice services. She died. And I was there to witness her last breath. But as I've come to learn, and again, depending on what you believe, what the audience believes, if you believe in an afterlife, and I do, I learned that maybe I was the first person to transition her to eternal life. So that's one of the ways that I was able to flip her moment of death. But in my students in my death, dying and bereavement class, I asked a female specifically, how many of you, your fathers would go absolutely bananas, angry, if you came home and told them you were pregnant out of wedlock? And I get a few hands that go up. And how many of them I ask them that your parents would think this is the worst possible thing that could happen? They again raise their hands. And I said, Let me tell you something. If he thinks you getting pregnant is the worst possible thing that can happen, you have him call me, your father call me. By the time I'm done with my story, he's gonna be loving you up because the worst thing that happened isn't that you got pregnant, was that you didn't live to see your child grow up.

SPEAKER_02 11:08

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 11:09

And I tell my students all about perspective. You know, when you think you have it bad, there's a solution to that situation. There isn't a solution to death. You know, so I tell them, I said, make sure they call me. I don't care where I am, I don't care where you are, just have them call me, and by the time we're done, they're gonna be okay.

SPEAKER_02 11:29

What's it like as a parent when your child says stop the stop the treatment it's done, I'm over?

SPEAKER_01 11:39

That's a question that has probably a couple of different answers. I can give you an answer as for now, for early grief, because frank, I was wrapped with guilt over a lot of things. My job as her father was to protect her, and I could protect her from anything, from boyfriends, from maybe the evils of the world, for lack of a better way to put that, or for some of the temptations of the world, there's probably a better way to put that. But I couldn't protect her from her cancer, and I held myself hostage. I said, What if she got sick right around the time that I was completing the requirements for my master's in social work degrees? I said, if I had only paid attention sooner, maybe we could have got this. Sarcomas need to be detected early. If I had only seen this sooner, maybe we could have done something. That's how I felt. I did not protect her. I was wrecked with guilt, and because I couldn't talk her to another clinical trial. I said, honey, I could find a clinical trial for you that I think might extend your quality of life. And she said, No. She said, I want to be here with my family, I want to be here with my daughter. And that's what she wanted. After two and a half years of putting myself through the ringer and then finally making peace with that, as I grew in later grief, I began to realize that no matter how old we are, Frank, we live on our terms and we die on our terms. And she was going to live life on her terms of whatever amount of life she had left, she was going to live it on her terms. And I had to accept that. And she died on her terms, which I had to accept. As painful as it was for me at that time, I realized that she had the right to self-determine her existence and her end of life.

SPEAKER_02 13:18

Wow. That is so powerful. Now, Dave, when we spoke earlier, you said something I wrote down. You said that grief never ends, but we can learn not to let it dominate our life. And when you're doing your counseling, how do you get that point across? Because some people are just devastated.

SPEAKER_01 13:39

Well, you know, in the beginning it's about planting seeds. And the reason I say that is that in early grief, there's a lot of things that go on with us physically, socially, psychologically. We have to work through that. We kind of have to wallow through that quagmire of emotions, of fatigue, of wondering what type of a world we're going to live in and the type of person we're going to be. We have to go through all of that. We have to experience all of that. And the other thing that really gets individuals that you know they they'll question is that they'll question the ups and downs of their emotions. They'll question even may sit sometimes. They may question after a year, am I still doing this? Well, society has in a lot of ways, and this was, I think, based on how they interpreted Kublarosa's stages of grief. And she did the you know, the stages of grief, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, those five stages. But those five stages were developed for individuals who were at their end of life to have a vocabulary for their end of life. But then everybody said, Oh, this is how we grieve. Now, there's been a ton of research done on the stages of grief, and the research has indicated that people don't grieve in stages. Okay. And grief is not time limited, and it's not six months or a year. After the first year, the second year can be worse than the first year because the reality of the second year hits. And the first year is kind of surreal. The second year you realize, okay, this is my life. Yeah, this happened. What am I going to do with it? So it's about planting seeds. It's about getting individuals to do things that they're capable of doing, reading short articles on grief, particularly from individuals who have experienced the same loss, who have, who have been on that journey a long time, finding a support group, trying to re-engage basically in daily living, doing a little things, like even if they can exercise five or ten minutes a day, if they're having trouble sleeping, if they can nap during the day. I say like nap like a baby, until which time they make a decision to, and I had to make that decision is do I want to re-engage in life or do I want to stay stuck? And I do believe we can make that choice after we wallow through that. And when we come to that conclusion, and somebody comes to me and says, Dave, I'm still hurting, but I want to try to move forward with my grief and try to take the next step. Then we talk about, okay, how do we find meaning again? What are some other tools that we can give them? They may ask some questions, you know, they might ask questions about the afterlife. You know, they might want to talk about seeing a medium so we can talk about ways that they can do that and you know, find somebody with integrity. And it's just basically being there for them in the long haul. When I meet with somebody for the first time, is tell me the story of your loved one. Tell me about your daughter, tell me about your son, tell me about your husband, tell me about your father. I want to get to know them through their eyes. It's being a companion with them, allowing the story to unfold, not trying to judge, not trying to find solutions, but getting to know and saying, okay, how can we help you incorporate the best parts of your loved one into the best parts of you so you can integrate your grief and move forward in your grief? And that's the eventual goal, but it takes time to get there. It isn't a linear process, it's very circular. Over 23 years in physical absence of my daughter, and though I know she's firmly with me, and I do know that I still have that connection with her as my daughter, I still yearn for her physical presence at times, and I can experience the raw pain of grief 23 years later. But the difference is that I know that's part of the deal, that I'm going to experience sadness that's going to coexist with joy. And we can experience, like just like two things can be true at once, we can experience two emotions at once. And I tell individuals, don't just shoot for happiness. Happiness is one state of mind, but embrace everything, embrace your sadness because the saddest people I know are the most compassionate people I know. When you're angry, embrace your anger, is because if that anger might have helped given you the energy to get through a moment that you couldn't get through or set a boundary that you couldn't set through. And as long as your anger is not destructive, we can learn from that. So it's embracing all of who we are, both the yin and the yang, so that we can move forward authentically and with purpose. I don't hang around with happy people, Frank, that tell me they're happy 24-7 because I'm not going to buy that. I had a conversation with you and I said, Frank, how's your day going? You said, Dave, today sucks. We could have that conversation because I know it's going to be authentic. And there's no need for us to be anything less than authentic, particularly each day that we are given to live on this. I want to be as authentic as I can with my emotions, with my feelings, and with my thoughts.

SPEAKER_02 18:34

You said something, Dave. Be with someone who's experienced the same loss. I've got an advanced degree like you, and I've talked to people who've never experienced something, but they've got the knowledge or they've got the education, and they write a book and they give a talk. It's not there, it's not the same. No, it doesn't connect, it doesn't resonate. So, how important is that to be with someone who's experienced similar type of loss when you're looking for a grief counselor?

SPEAKER_01 19:05

For me, I think there's a lot of good counselors that can deal with grief as long as they know how to deal with it. They don't have to necessarily experience the same loss, but they have to be empathic. They have to be willing to be a companion, throw out clinical expertise. Richard Tadeshi and Lawrence Calhoun came up with a something called a framework called the expert companionship, where essentially it's about active listening, it's about being present for stories, and just allowing that story to unfold and being willing to be a companion with somebody's worst pain. If individuals can do that, therapists can do that and coaches can do that, they're going to be gulp. They don't necessarily have to experience the same loss, but they have to be willing to understand and create a space where that story can unfold. The other thing that a lot of times I've heard individuals have gone to really good therapists who have lost a child or experienced another catastrophic loss is that they'll pull out the playbook on the stages of grief. And no, I would sit down with any therapist and say, if you pull that out, you pull that out with me, I'd be out the door in a New York City minute because it that does not apply. Nobody grieves in stages. Research has proved it, real life has proved it for me. And the other thing with education, I have a I have a degree. I'm a licensed master of social worker. I was a credentialed alcoholism and substance abuse counselor, but frank, all the training in the world didn't even prepare me for this. And I've been asked that question Did your job as a therapist, did your experience as a therapist help you? No, I mean my experience as a therapist, I sat with a lot of individuals who had trauma because of addiction, uh, trauma due to addiction, a variety of different things. But my education didn't begin to prepare me for this. There isn't a textbook in the world that I could find that talked about the death of a child. In fact, the textbooks I did find on Death and Dying, Frank, the early ones had a paragraph or less than a half a page on the death of a child. There's been books written on it. And the death of a child is very complex because it's unnatural. It alters the natural laws of the universe. Kids are supposed to carry their parents' legacy. As a parent, I never thought I'd be carrying my child's legacy or developing a legacy for my child. So everything gets reversed. The laws of rule and order become discombobulated. And a lot of work that I had to do was to take a look at my values, look at my priorities, look at my beliefs, and say, okay, what goes, what gets changed, what gets expanded, because the person I was at 47 when my daughter died is not the person I am at 70. In fact, if you ask me who I was at 47, you'd need a search party and a special op steam to find me because that person no longer exists.

SPEAKER_02 21:52

Amazing. Now I've watched some of your interviews, Dave, and and you address other than just if you have toxic relationships, family history. Is the process the same as far as the grief counseling with people who've been in terrible family situations or abusive trauma?

SPEAKER_01 22:09

I think one of the things that for individuals who've experienced trauma due to grief or trauma due to abuse or toxic generational trauma due to unhealthy family systems, the first and foremost is thing is creating a safe and structured place and consistency for them to share, but also empowering them to have some say in what that safety and structure looks like. So I think if you can create that safe space, allow them to share their narrative, where they felt they fell into the family, what they felt those toxic relationships, how it has impacted them moving forward. We can collaborate on what we can do as far as a treatment plan or a plan of action to help them break that those chains of generational trauma. I think it's the same approach as safety first and establishing yourself as a companion to that. There's also symbolic losses that are not due to death. I mean, children who had to take the role of their parents because one parent was alcoholic and they had to take the role of the non-functioning parent. They said my childhood was lost. I had to become an adult at eight years old. I didn't know what it was like to play, I didn't know what it was like to have friends. So that brings out a whole new slew of grief issues. I think a lot of it is tied in whether it's lost due to death or lost, you know, symbolic loss, which typically you see, I think, a lot in trauma-related situations.

SPEAKER_02 23:31

And we spoke a few weeks ago, you're a professor, and you mentioned that we are dealing with an extremely depressed younger generation. They've lived through COVID, remote learning, missing major milestones, promised graduation, et cetera, et cetera. And now we get this daily bombardment of negative rhetoric, propaganda, war, et cetera. But can we get hope back? How are you going to help these young people feel a sense of hope again?

SPEAKER_01 24:01

I think one is certainly being sensitive to what they're going through and understanding what they deal with on a daily basis. Trying to get inside their worlds without actually passing yourself off as a young person. And Frank, at 70, nobody's going to confuse me for a young person. But I try to understand what the students are going through. And I just have them talk to me. Tell me how your day's going. Tell me, and I try to take an interest in them. It's a different generation, but they're getting information overload that we never got when I was their age. You know, you're talking 24-hour news, you're talking social media, the misinformation on social media. Social media is a source of depression and anxiety for young adults because of the comparison factor. I think there's hope. I see a lot of young adults every day, I think have gifts. And I tell every young adult, I said, look, I don't care what you've done in other classes, you can get a D, you can get an F. I'm going to treat you as if you're capable of doing great things. And I think if you again create that safe environment in the classroom for them, they're going to engage. I think you just have to show them that, yeah, they do mean something, that they have a voice. So many times young adults will be hesitant to ask me questions because of history. They may have had other high school teachers that said, Well, I don't allow questions. Or they may have had other professors in other schools that say, Well, I don't allow questions. So I would tell those professors, don't complain when you're telling me your students don't have critical thinking skills, because the only way they may have critical thinking skills is if you allow them to question stuff.

SPEAKER_02 25:32

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 25:33

And it's basically understanding their lives without being them, understanding where you can be of help. The mantra of my podcast is we're all students and teachers, so let's learn from each other. I said, within every great student, there's a great teacher, and hopefully, within every great teacher, there's a great student. If you think for a minute I can't learn from you, you're mistaken. So I said, hopefully I learn more from you than you do from me. And I try to make it like we're in this together, it's collaboration, and I try to empower them as much as I can. The other part of it, Frank, is life skills. I think there are a lot of students who are not prepared for the rigors of college for a lot of different reasons. I think a lot of time on devices, I think, decreases socialization skills because a lot of that requires, you know, face-to-face contact, learning how to work with teams, learning how to compromise. You're not going to learn that over Facebook or Instagram or Snapchat. You're not, it's not going to happen. Okay. And I think I would love to see every school in America have a life skills curriculum, you know, where they teach this is how you balance a checkbook, you know, this is how you balance a budget. This is how you work cooperatively in a team. This is how you organize your time. This is how you deal with stress. Introduce techniques like yoga, like meditation, anything that can help individuals reduce stress and anxiety without medication. I can go on for another hour. I think the misdiagnosis of a lot of young adults and they're placed on medication they don't need, and it has to me really negative side effects that stunts their development in a lot of different areas. But that would be for another podcast because I can go on for about another two hours with that.

SPEAKER_02 27:17

So yeah, I'll bet. I've heard from other people who have your mindset that the younger generation, previous students, because of the COVID, because of the isolation that they experienced, they have difficulty either controlling or understanding their emotions.

SPEAKER_01 27:35

Do you see that? Yeah. I think with COVID, especially if you're a freshman in college, a freshman year is key for establishing community, establishing your socialization skills within that community. They weren't getting that. And I'll tell you, I had to do Zoom lectures, and I'll tell you, it sucked because you know you didn't get the face-to-face contact, you didn't get that type of connection. And then we went to hybrid, where we would half the time the class would be on ground, the other half of the class that was on ground would be online. It was a little better, but still it's easy to kind of zone out on Zoom. And I've done that with webinars. I'll just shut the camera off and listen and do other stuff. I told my students, you're never going to see another Zoom lecture from me. If anything, I record a lecture and just tell them to pick it up on their own if I have to. But I mean, I think the other part of that is they need to know that you care. They need to know that somebody in the world cares about them. And I think if you create that atmosphere in the classroom, students will come around. I tell my students, I said, look, anytime you need to talk, talk. And I can share one story with you in terms of it. I sometimes this one brings tears to my eyes. Because as a parent who's lost a child, I look at myself as kind of being like a surrogate parent to all these students that come into the classroom. They're an extension of my family. My experiences with my daughter's death has committed me to try to be the best professor I can be and the best person I can be for my students, and to lead with compassion, to lead with understanding. And so one of my students, she took Frank death and dying with me three times. Now here's what happened. Her brother committed suicide, her completed suicide in his home. It was a shotgun suicide. During COVID, she was working in a skilled nursing facility, lost two patients, and then there was another family member who died by suicide. And so obviously she wasn't attending classes, and I understood that, but I was hoping I said, geez, good draw so you don't get an F. She failed twice. She came back a third time to take this class. And I looked at her and I said, Look, I said, I wouldn't blame you if you took a like an introduction to basket weaving course for three hours just to get the elective rather than take a course this and tense. She looked at me and she said, I want to finish what I started. But during the semester, the weight of her losses started to really take its toll, and she was having some family issues. She came into my office and she said to me, She was thinking of you know thinking of suicide. She came to me, she goes, I don't know if anybody would care that I'm I'm dead. I said, You're wrong. I said, There's one person who would care, and that'd be me. So I basically told her, Yeah, you're you're gonna have one sad person around, that's me. She felt better, I think, after the conversation. Turns out now she's married. She's got a child and she's doing well. And I believe Frank, and I'm not saying this to pat myself on the back, but if I had not created that safe environment for her to thrive, she might not have come to see me. The only thing I had to do was show her that I cared. Because if she was talking to me about suicide, she's also telling me, give me a reason to live. Talk, talk me out of it. When she said, No, nobody would care if I was dead or alive, I said, I would. I said, one person that would, I would. Because basically I told her, you know, I the message I communicated, you're part of my family now. My students are part of my extended family. And I always vowed to my daughter silently. I said, I'm gonna do my best not to lose another child on my watch.

SPEAKER_02 31:11

Wow. All the things you've done, Dave, and all the stuff you've accomplished, what makes you the most proud?

SPEAKER_01 31:17

Yeah, honestly, I'm gonna give you a two-pronged answer. One is my family, my wife of 44 years, Sherry has been just supportive of me with everything that I do, and our relationship got stronger after Janine's death. You know, we understood how we each other grieved, and we just got stronger for each other. We have a great relationship now. My two boys, Dan and Matt, are doing well for themselves, and Janine's brothers are doing well for themselves. My four grandchildren, my two great-grandchildren now that Janine's daughter has given me, I am proud of them. They are all the apples of my eye. I love them dearly, and also my students. My proudest accomplishment is getting student recognitions from you know the student athlete teams as far as my proficiency as a professor. And I've gotten, you know, a couple of I've gotten one, I've got a staff award for the adjunct faculty member of the year. But when your students recognize you, that's special. And they've also become a part of my family as well, too. So I'm proud of my family. I'm proud of the work that I've done with the students, and I'm humbled that they take the time to recognize what I do. Because I don't do what I do to teach for certificates or accolades. I do what I do because I love it. I firmly believe in the future of our young adults, and I want to try to make a difference in the life of every young adult that I can come across. And I do that in on a rovin with my daughter.

SPEAKER_02 32:39

That's amazing. That's wonderful. How do people get a hold of you, David? Because they're going to want to talk to you after this.

SPEAKER_01 32:45

Well, my son calls me the world's oldest millennial, so we'll start there. Uh I'm on Facebook, I'm on LinkedIn, I'm on Instagram. You can find me anywhere. If anybody wants to subscribe or to or follow the podcast, it's the Teaching Journeys Podcast. I'm on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and other major podcast channels. My website is David Robertsmsw.com if they want to find out more about my background. And they can also email me at bootsy and angel at gmail.com. Bootsy and Angel were two of my daughter Janine's favorite cats, but my personal emails after after my daughter's two favorite cats.

SPEAKER_02 33:24

So I was wondering because when I looked it up.

SPEAKER_01 33:26

Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, I mean that could leave that could leave a lot open for interpretation. And so that's why I qualify that with every podcast. I was listen, I'm not running some type of illegal brothel or escort service. It's these are my two daughters' cats. So I just wanted to make sure that I just wanted to make that clear to everybody.

SPEAKER_02 33:44

That's amazing. Well, thank you, Dave. We're just about out of time. I want to thank you again to show us that we can move forward after a devastating loss. That there are people who give us hope, who will relate to us, will show us that kindness that's absolutely required. The key, folks, you have to work with someone like Dave, someone who's been where you are, and someone who can guide you because they know what's going on, they know what the steps are. So let me leave you all with this. A lot of us are in this alone. And the secret to walking on water is to know where the rocks are. And today, Dave showed us where many of those rocks are. As we continue with this podcast, we're gonna find more rocks, we're gonna bounce back better than ever. If you enjoyed this, share it with a friend. Please subscribe. And Dave, once again, thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 34:34

Frank, it was my pleasure. Thanks for having me on the program. I enjoyed it.

SPEAKER_00 34:40

So that's it for today's episode of L. Head on over at Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen and subscribe to the show. One like you listener every single week. We post a review on Apple Podcasts or iTunes.